A spa wants to determine which duration of its massage packages is the most popular. The spa has 30-minute, 50-minute, and 75-minute sessions. Which statistical measure should be used and is less affected by outliers and skewed data?

Standard deviation measures the spread of data points around the mean. It is highly sensitive to outliers, meaning that extreme values can significantly alter the standard deviation, leading to misleading conclusions about the data's variability. In this case, it does not effectively indicate the most popular package duration.

The mean calculates the average duration by summing all durations and dividing by the number of sessions. However, it can be heavily influenced by outliers, such as an unusually long or short massage session, which could skew the average and misrepresent the most popular choice.

The median is the middle value when data points are arranged in order. While it is less affected by outliers than the mean, it does not specifically identify the most frequently preferred duration. Instead, it provides a central value, which may not reflect the actual popularity of the massage packages.